What Tuta actually does
Tuta (formerly Tutanota) encrypts more of your mailbox than most competitors — not just the message body, but subject lines and calendar entries too — and gives that away for free on a real standing account.
The core product
Tuta is built by a German company and encrypts email content, subject lines, and calendar entries end to end, using clients that are fully open source and can be independently inspected rather than trusted on faith. It's available through a web app and native apps for desktop and mobile, all built on those same open-source clients. The free plan is a real account rather than a time-limited trial: 1GB of storage, one calendar, and up to three labels, with no expiry date attached. What it withholds is aimed at pushing genuinely heavier users toward a paid tier — custom domains, calendar sharing, and bulk email import are all reserved for the paid Revolutionary and Legend plans.
What's new or notable
According to Tuta's own site, Revolutionary — the mid-tier paid plan — runs €3.60/month billed monthly or €3/month if paid annually, and includes 20GB of storage, 15 extra email alias addresses, unlimited calendars and labels, and up to three custom domains with catch-all support. Legend, the top tier, runs €9.60/month billed monthly or €8/month paid annually, raising storage to 500GB, alias addresses to 30, and custom domain support to 10, while adding calendar sharing, event invitations, and an autoresponder that the lower tiers don't include. Both paid tiers add priority or standard email support over the free plan's community-level help.
Who should use Tuta
Great fit if…
- You want subject lines encrypted too — most encrypted email providers leave subject lines and metadata readable; Tuta encrypts those along with the message body and calendar entries.
- You want a free plan with no expiry — 1GB of storage, one calendar, and three labels are available permanently, not as a trial countdown.
- You want open-source clients — every Tuta client, web and native, is fully open source, so the encryption implementation can be independently checked.
- You want cheaper pricing by committing annually — both paid tiers drop by roughly 15-20% when billed yearly instead of monthly, per Tuta's own site.
Skip it if…
- You need more than one calendar for free — the free plan is capped to a single calendar, with unlimited calendars reserved for paid tiers.
- You rely on calendar sharing or event invites — those features are Legend-only, so even Revolutionary subscribers don't get them.
- You expect encrypted full-text search to behave exactly like a normal inbox — because subject lines and metadata are encrypted too, some search and filtering behavior works differently than in a non-encrypted mailbox.
- You're migrating years of existing email — bulk email import isn't available on the free plan, and moving an established inbox and its filters takes real manual effort.
Pricing in detail
Tuta publishes three tiers; the figures below come from Tuta's own site.
| Plan | Price | What's included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | €0, no time limit | 1GB storage, 1 calendar, up to 3 labels, full end-to-end encryption on content and subject lines |
| Revolutionary | €3.60/month, or €3/month billed yearly | 20GB storage, 15 alias addresses, unlimited calendars and labels, up to 3 custom domains, email support |
| Legend | €9.60/month, or €8/month billed yearly | 500GB storage, 30 alias addresses, up to 10 custom domains, calendar sharing, event invites, autoresponder, priority support |
Where it falls short
- Free tier is deliberately narrow — one calendar, no aliases or custom domain, and no calendar sharing, event invitations, autoresponder, bulk email import, or inbox rules, all of which require upgrading.
- Encryption changes some workflows — encrypting subject lines and metadata, not just message bodies, means some features that assume a fully plaintext mailbox — like certain kinds of full-text search — behave differently than in a conventional inbox.
- Migration takes manual work — moving an existing inbox over means re-establishing filters and rules by hand rather than a fully automated import, and bulk import itself is a paid-tier feature.
- Big jump to real sharing features — calendar sharing and event invites are Legend-exclusive, so Revolutionary subscribers who need them must upgrade again.
Privacy & data
Tuta's encryption goes further than most competitors by covering subject lines and calendar entries end to end, not just message bodies, and every client — web, desktop, and mobile — is fully open source, so the implementation can be independently reviewed rather than trusted as a black box. Tuta is built and operated by a company based in Germany, so it operates under GDPR as an EU company. Beyond what's described here, we did not independently verify a specific named encryption algorithm or a recent third-party security audit for this listing.
How we checked this
This entry is based on Tuta's own pricing page at tuta.com/pricing, checked on 2026-09-04, together with its published plan-comparison details confirming exact monthly and annual rates for Revolutionary and Legend. We did not test Tuta's encryption implementation ourselves or verify search behavior hands-on; claims about how encrypted search and metadata handling behave reflect Tuta's own documentation.
What you get, what you give up
What you get
- Encrypts subject lines and calendar entries too, not just message bodies
- Free plan is a real account with no time limit, not a trial
What you give up
- The free plan gives only one calendar and no email aliases or custom domain, and it lacks calendar sharing, event invites, autoresponder, email import, and inbox rules - all reserved for paid plans, per Tuta's own site.
- Because subject lines and metadata are also encrypted, some features taken for granted elsewhere - like full-text search across encrypted content in every situation - work differently than in a non-encrypted mailbox.